Like Blaise Pascal, Pierre Bayle was a fideist who had little confidence in mankind’s search for knowledge of any kind and thus saw such shortcomings as indicative of the need for faith. While Pascal came from the Catholic tradition, however, Bayle came from a Calvinist background. While Bayle’s name is hardly of celebrity status today, it is important to understand that Bayle was perhaps the most widely read author throughout all of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. This post will address the conflict which he sought to establish between religious faith and philosophical reasoning.
While we saw that Pascal attempted to defend his fideism by way of pointing to what he saw as the absurdities of the human condition without Christ, Bayle took a different approach. Bayle sought to demonstrate our ultimate dependence upon faith by attempting to establish the incompatibility of faith with reason. Unfortunately, however, for Bayle, at the very time that he attempted to establish the incompatibility of faith and reason the western world was being overwhelmed with a strong confidence in reason, primarily due to the achievements of Newton.
This curious timing produced some interesting results by way of interpretation. During Bayle’s lifetime in Western Europe it was quite clear, primarily due to the political context in France, that Bayle was a staunch fideist. During the 18th century, however, this context had become largely forgotten, and Bayle’s belief in the incompatibility of faith and reason came to be interpreted as an attack on faith. Indeed, many of the Philosophes such as Voltaire considered Bayle to be one of the fathers of the French enlightenment. Indeed, it was not until the latter half of the 20th century that Bayle’s intentions were recognized for what they were.
Let us consider some of the arguments which he put forth in defense of his fideism. First of all it should be recognized that Bayle was a Calvinist which meant that he held a notion of predestination along with irresistible grace. In this context, Bayle discusses the case of King David from the Old Testament. David committed essentially every sin which could be committed, and yet the Bible claims that he was blessed and saved. The interpretation which 18th century intellectuals gave to this point was that the Bible was not reliable. The point which Bayle intended to make was that we simply do not and indeed cannot understand the ways of God, and thus rely on faith. (This interpretation was rather transparent in that contrary to most Protestants of France at that time, Bayle was advocating pacificism toward King Louis the XIV, who mirrored King David in more than a few ways.)
Bayle uses another example to illustrate the incompatibility of faith, specifically the Christian faith, and reason, namely the problem of evil. He revives the Classical arguments which state that either God can prevent evil in the world and doesn’t, and is therefore immoral by any natural reasoning, or He simply can’t prevent evil and is thus impotent by any natural reasoning. No amount of reasoning has ever been able to account for this, and this only goes to show how ineffective reasoning is. Indeed, he argues that were a Christian to enter a debate with a Manichean (a religionist who believes that the world was created by the powers of both good and evil) the Manichean would win hands down in terms of rational reasoning.
Indeed, Bayle brings into play almost every paradox which from well known from Classical times, including Zeno’s paradox, the problem of motion, the Trinity, etc. Bayle takes aim at all intellectual confidence and overextension of human reason, advocating a simple faith in its place. Simple faith, according to Bayle, is the only conclusion one can reach after one becomes aware of the nature of human knowledge by way of education. In fact, Bayle would have loved the modern phrase, “the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know,” only his would have been more along the lines of, “the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know anything.”
Such a simple faith, according to Bayle, was the perfect antidote to the religious arrogance which he saw around him. A simple faith would never be so sure as to go to war with those who did not believe as they did. A simple faith would never burn anybody at the stake for witchcraft or heresy. A simple faith, instead, encouraged humility, tolerance and quiet belief. It is in this vein that he decries superstition in Christendom as well as the idea that all atheists are necessarily vicious.
Give such conclusions, as well as the tenacity with which Bayle defends them, it is not difficult to see how pretty much all religious traditions, everyone who did not believe as he did to be exact, would disagree and vilify him. Indeed, during his lifetime he was frequently accused of Godlessness, though such accusations were seen to be transparently false while he still lived. Nevertheless, once he had died, such attributions were taken up both by religionists as well as those hostile to religion.
